


Killing Snakes

by Lesbianna



Series: Tales of Lions and Snakes [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (even in this universe), 7th Year AU, Gen, Gray Harry, Harry's a Horcrux, Polyjuice Potion, Sarcasm and Slytherin, Slytherin Harry, The scene in the forest, WBWL, also only a oneshot, read sunmoonandstars books first if you want to understand Harry and Jules' dynamic better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-11
Updated: 2017-12-11
Packaged: 2019-02-13 15:44:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12987237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lesbianna/pseuds/Lesbianna
Summary: “Are you here to stop me, to fight me?”“I suppose it has a certain kind of poetry to it. A certain kind of fairytale element – the showdown between the two brothers. Good and evil. Except I’m not the snake you’re here to kill, now am I, Jules.”It wasn’t a question, it was simply a statement. Harry’s eyes were as calculating as always.“You hate me, always have!” Jules started angrily, and Harry’s mouth gleamed with his cold grin. “I suppose that’s true. So why don’t you come at me. I need something to amuse me now. Give this fairytale the ending it deserves, won’t you?”--The only Horcrux left is the snake, Jules Potter thinks. His twin brother Harry agrees. He just doesn't agree on whether said snake is also human.





	Killing Snakes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sunmoonandstars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunmoonandstars/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Harry Potter and the Den of Snakes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12608820) by [sunmoonandstars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunmoonandstars/pseuds/sunmoonandstars). 
  * Inspired by [Harry Potter and the Monster of Slytherin](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12708852) by [sunmoonandstars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunmoonandstars/pseuds/sunmoonandstars). 



> Hi Sunmoonandstars! Surprise! This is for you! It's been scrambling around my head, and I figured you might like to read it! I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Information you need to know if you aren't sunmoonandstars or just haven't read the original fic:  
> Harry and Jules are twins, Jules is presumed to be the Boy Who Lived. Jules is a Gryffindor, Harry is a Slytherin.  
> Jules believes Harry is evil, Harry thinks Jules is a prat.

_**JULES** _

He stepped forwards, slowly, watching the leaves on the ground in almost childish fascination as they crunched, oh-so-lightly beneath his feet. The world was so quiet now. It seemed unfathomable that only minutes ago, there had been a full-blown battle. He would only need to glance back over his shoulder to see the castle and be pulled back into reality – the reality of smoking towers and crumbling walls. Out here, in the Forbidden Forest, all things were quiet. You-Know-Who had simply retreated into the deadly peace and quiet, while the rest of the world was trying to piece itself back together, trying to find the injured and the dead.

Not for much longer. This – this was what he’d been training for his entire life. He wouldn’t have thought he’d have to destroy historic artifacts and kill a snake to even begin to rid the world of You-Know-Who, but that was life. Nothing was what you thought it would be like.

He had stepped into a clearing. No – less a clearing than just a small area of trees positioned slightly, slightly farther apart than they had been so far.

His reflexes had been developed well over the years, and he flicked to attention immediately as a shadow moved in the edge of his vision, his wand pointing directly at a pale young man with messy, dark hair and a thin, jagged scar on his forehead stepping out of the trees.

“Hello, Jules Potter,” his twin brother said, his tone pleasant and conversational. Everything they’d never been with each other.

“Are you here to stop me, to fight me?”

“I suppose it has a certain kind of poetry to it. A certain kind of fairytale element – the showdown between the two brothers. Good and evil. Except I’m not the snake you’re here to kill, now am I, Jules.”

It wasn’t a question, it was simply a statement. Harry’s eyes were as calculating as always.

“You hate me, always have!” Jules started angrily, and Harry’s mouth gleamed with his cold grin. “I suppose that’s true. So why don’t you come at me. I need something to amuse me now. Give this fairytale the ending it deserves, won’t you?”

And despite how Jules knew, somewhere, that this had to be a bait of some kind, something fitting into a larger, malicious plan, because Harry was a slimy, conniving Slytherin, who never did anything without a plan – despite this, he charged directly at Harry, the only thought in his mind being that he needed to surprise Harry, who would have expected him to use his wand.

Harry brought out the recklessness and unabashed Gryffindor in him, always eager to roar and fight. He always had. His feet flew across the leaf-covered ground, and his fists were flying, and his magic near exploding as he reached him.

Harry’s wand movement was quick as lightning, and Jules was hit by the stunning spell, unable to avoid it in the too-close proximity. Harry grabbed his arm as he began falling backward and with a rough hand he grabbed the back of Jules’ hair and _pulled._

A handful of short, black hair was ripped out, and Harry let go of him, letting him fall back onto muddy earth and leaves. He pulled out a flask from within his black robes – a flask with a muddy, bubbly substance within. With growing horror, Jules saw him deposit the hairs in his hand in the flask, saw the color change from brown to a bright silver color, the color of unicorn blood or a gleaming Sickle coin.

A curious grin passed over Harry’s face, as he looked down at his stunned brother and he chuckled. “You get a silver Polyjuice potion, I get a golden one. Funny, isn’t it, how we each take the color of the other’s house. Slytherin silver, Gryffindor gold.”

Jules wasn’t finding it laughable, but perhaps that had something to do with how he was unable to laugh at the moment. He glared angrily up at him, as Harry examined the bottle of Polyjuice, wishing he could get up and _do something._

“Have you ever wondered what you would look like when the Polyjuice potion of your twin? If it would be less painful?” Harry asked, his voice still as calm as ever, his green eyes flashing, as he looked down at his twin brother. Jules imagined that’s what the killing curse would look like. He wondered how Harry could ever find love, if the first thing anyone thought of when looking into his eyes was that he was deadly.

Harry unstopped the flask, and took a swig, grimacing at the unpleasant taste.

It was the strangest thing. Barely anything changed – the scar fixed itself into something straighter, his hair became even messier and grew in length as well, covering his ears, his eye color bled from green to brown. He took off his glasses, tapping them a few times with his wand until they had a perfectly round shape, and then put them on again.

Jules was staring at himself, and his heart trembled at it. Harry could do _anything_ , and people would believe it was him.

Harry grabbed his wand out of his hand and stepped back a few feet.

Harry waved a hand, and the spell on Jules was lifted. He jumped to his feet. “I truly hope that running at him, waving your fists around, is not how you’re going to want to kill Voldemort. All bluster and rage.” His sharp, sarcastic smile – so strange on Jules’ face - shone through the dark of the night. “I don’t believe Voldemort will indulge your petty need for fist fighting. As I hear it, he detests the ways of Muggles.”

Before Jules could find the words to respond, Harry looked at him with serious eyes.

“You’re on your way to destroy the sixth Horcrux. You undoubtedly know that Nagini had been surrounded with warding spells, and is at the side of Voldemort.”  
This, Jules could handle. Cold, hard exchanging of facts. No worrying that Harry was trying to curse him or hex him.

“I do know this, yes.”

“I can bring you to him. Just put on your clever little cloak, and follow me,” Harry said, his mouth – Jules’ mouth - twisted into a sneer. “As long as you do try not to mess up my own plans.”

He handed the wand over to Jules. It felt strange, receiving your want from yourself.

Jules just nodded as he grabbed his wand tightly with one hand and with the other one finding his invisibility cloak from his robes, throwing it over himself. Once it covered him completely, Harry nodded and started walking deeper into the forest. They walked in silence for a while, two silent, pale ghosts.

And then a fire was visible through the trees, and they reached the clearing in which Voldemort was stood amongst his death-eaters, waiting. Waiting.

They both stepped forwards, into the clearing, and pandemonium began. The death eaters were shouting, yelling, laughing, at the sight of the seventeen-year-old boy they assumed had come to give himself up like a good hero.

What could be heard above all else though, was the bellowing voice shouting “NO! JULES! JULES!” It was Hagrid, tied to a tree. Everything in Jules ached to run to him, to free him, but doing so would blow his cover, and the snake’s death came before anything else. One of the Death Eaters flicked his wand at him, quieting him, and as though everyone else had been hit by it too, they fell quiet as well.

Harry Potter stopped in front of the fire, wearing his brother’s face. The fire was crackling, and the world was so _quiet._

Looking at him now, in front of a fire, not moving a muscle, he looked so young. Somewhere in there was a boy who had learned spells that pulled people’s pants down, who protected an eleven-year-old girl by burning a troll, who knew parseltongue and was so unlike Jules himself that it made him ache. Who had snarked and hexed and fought his way to this moment. Who had managed to bargain his way to knowledge, who knew how to inflict damage and never let his own be seen.

Harry always surprised him, somehow. Even when he learned to never expect anything, Harry would subvert it. And even now, as he broke down the next to last ward of the snake’s protection and adding a petrification spell so that the snake would not attack when he moved in for the kill – even now, he was expecting Harry to do something surprising.

The giant snake’s glittery eyes were looking back at him, frozen in time, and Jules felt no remorse as he cast the Sectumsempra upon it – Avada Kedavra would have been too risky, too bright. It would have drawn attention. Sectumsempra, upon a still body? That was nothing. No one would see. The blood started flowing in grotesque rivulets, like the Nile in Egypt. He knelt next to the snake, feeling out the way it still had life within it with a couple fingers. It still had a heartbeat. He’d have to wait until he was sure the snake was dead to attack Voldemort.

The seconds were endless, and no one, not even Jules, was moving. He kept expecting Harry to do something, but nothing happened.

In those, endless, endless seconds, his mind came up with multiple ways this could end. Harry could kneel for the snake-faced man, proving that what he’d always known about his brother was true, that he was a follower of the Dark. _But –_ something protested inside him – _why would he need to disguise himself then_? Maybe he’d attempt to bargain with Him. Merlin knows he’d made many bargains since he’d started at this godforsaken school. The Boy Who Lived making a bargain held more weight than The Brother of The Boy Who Lived doing the same, didn’t it?

And then, the snake-faced man spoke, in his cold, clear voice, that made Jules’ arms break into goosebumps. He had heard it so many times, yet the sound of it always surprised him. So high and cold, inhumane.

“Jules Potter. The Boy Who Lived.”

Involuntarily, Jules couldn’t help the thought that slithered into his mind as he saw his brother – _he must be so scared_. He didn’t want the thought, but it kept being present, resonating inside his head. Harry wasn’t a Gryffindor, and he did not prize bravery. Much could be said about his brother and his possible inclinations towards evil, but he’d never do anything completely without reason. There must be one for this.

Harry inclined his head slightly, but did not move at all otherwise. And then, in a flash, Voldemort’s crazed voice screamed, “ _Avada Kedavra!”_

A flash of green light, exactly the color of Harry Potter’s flashing eyes hit his brother. His brother who had not as much taken out his wand. His brother who, Jules realized, had not even tried to fight.

Harry had been able to do anything in Jules’ body, and he had chosen to die. He had chosen to die, looking like Jules. Somewhere, something clicked into place, but Jules didn’t want to examine the realization that his brother had been a Horcrux too closely, nor the fact that Harry had _bought him time_. Time in which Voldemort would believe a victory had been won, a cracked, broken victory, because the prophecy had not been fulfilled yet, though Voldemort did not know that, and when it was, it would not be to Voldemort’s advantage. He didn’t _want_ to _think_ about it – his heart felt too numb, like it was being gripped by an iron fist.

“Is he dead?” Voldemort asked, his voice somehow different, strained. _His soul is so small and fractured now. There’s barely anything left._ “You! You check!”

Malfoy’s mother scrabbled over, her face pale and frightened, and as she kneeled, her back to them all to check for Harry’s heartbeat, he thought of attacking Voldemort, ending this injustice. Because Harry could not have survived the Killing Curse; he was not the chosen one, and he’d never be. He would only be dead from now on – and if it had not been for the thought of what Harry would say if he recklessly cast himself into danger _again_ , he’d have attacked Voldemort that very second.

 _Typical Gryffindor_ , _all bluster and rage,_ Harry would probably have sneered, and cast a nasty hex on him to keep him in place. _If you want things done, you’ll have to do them yourself. We Slytherins understand that._

Narcissa Malfoy straightened up, her face devoid of blood and blank as a slate. “Dead, my Lord.”

A broken, wounded lion’s roar echoed in his chest – and then a loud sob echoed in the forest. And though Rubeus Hagrid was sobbing the wrong name, Jules knew exactly how he felt.

When a twin dies, is the other one still alive?

**Author's Note:**

> I read sunmoonandstars series, Sarcasm and Slytherin (of which 'Harry Potter and the Den of Snakes' is the first) and in my head, I had the image of Harry and Jules' rivalry continuing throughout all the books, culminating in the final battle.  
> I don't know if this is even remotely compliant to what sunmoonandstars had imagined would happen - but I think, personally, this story needs to be out there, as a fanfic of a fanfic. There can be no greater honor than to have fanfiction written about your fanfiction.
> 
> I hope she'll continue the series - at this point, we only have the two first books. I recommend reading them immensely, even just for the character study.


End file.
